Search Results for: matter

It is the far future. Earth is beautifully planned efficiently run and happily united. It is the world that dreamers have envisioned since the beginning of time – no slums, no crime, no poverty, no disease, no shortages. But still, it is a world with problems – people have become so lazy, so self-satisfied, that human progress has all but ceased. To make matters worse, addicts of the newly-developed “programmed dreams” are increasing at an enormous rate.

Only a few individuals understand the far-reaching consequences of these problems; only a few realize that the human race is destroying itself.

Being lost in space was no new experience to John Grimes, whose career as an interstellar officer had brought him into many such dilemmas. But being lost inside a colossal alien spacecraft had no precedent.

Complicating the matter was the discovery that the very universe was not their own but an alternate and that their captor seemed to be the omnipotent force of that entire other cosmos.
As Grime’s only companion was the comely policewoman, Una Freeman, the fate that the Alien God selected for them required the creation of a Garden of Eden. But there were two serpents in this one – both of them bicycles!

Claire Escott had ignored her father’s warning against involvement with her fiancé Mark Rowland. However, she little realised the extent of the scientist’s corroding ambition when he invents a method of matter transmission. And it was not long after their marriage that Rowland’s ruthless pursuit of a scientific empire encompassed a horri­fying murder. But that was only the start of things. Mark’s scientific genius and obsessive ambition to go one step further eventually led to the conquest of space, culminating in the mass destruc­tion of an interstellar war!

Sam Brice, the perfect rugged hero, is involved with a young widow named Janice Gantry. But when she vanishes, Janice leaves behind a trail of blackmail, murder and a man at war with his own sense of duty.

Sam is too curious to steer clear of the mystifying disappearances off the Florida Keys, too stubborn to avoid making enemies with a cunning criminal and killer, and perhaps too enraged to do what he knows he must to save the one woman who matters: become as cold, impersonal, and deadly as an assassin.

By the CWA Gold Dagger award-winning author of Other Paths to Glory

In the fourth title of Anthony Price’s gripping spy series, British Intelligence officer David Audley slips away to Italy without authorisation, taking his wife with him. Immediately the suspicion arises that he may have defected, and the head of Italian security is also interested in his arrival, particularly as it has flushed from cover a rogue communist.

But Audley has his own reasons for leaving Britain, in an investigation that becomes a matter of life or death.

Ausley Wyett’s release from prison after sixteen years in prison is an event of many consequences for the residents of San Rodrigo County, California. Five men whose testimonies led to Wyett’s conviction receive threatening letters, and one by one become victims of fatal accidents. But there is no evidence of murder. For Acting Sheriff Joe Bain, proving Wyett’s guilt – or innocencev – is more than a matter of justice; while campaigning to be elected Sheriff, he must stubbornly protect Wyett from townspeople who insist upon immediate arrest- or a lynching.

Vernon Gray is the oldest and richest of the residents of the four flats on the sixth floor of a block in his small seaside town. After seeing her on TV, he has instructed Rosa Epton to draft his last will and testament, when another of her clients demands her attention on an urgent matter: he has been accused of stealing five pounds from the collection plate at the end of the Sunday morning service.

And then Vernon Gray disappears, along with his housekeeper, leaving a welter of puzzling clues to confuse the police, and the learned Rosa.

Brilliant physicist and warrior Michael Kane’s experiments in matter transmission catapult him across space and time to the verdant and war-torn Mars of the distant past. There he meets the beautiful Princess Shizala and learns the ways of her people, the Kamala, and of their war with the Argzoon. Swept up in their civil war, with Kane win the day, and the heart of the Princess?

The creator of Elric of Melniboné, Michael Moorcock remains one of the most honored science fiction and fantasy authors of all time. Moorcock’s Eternal Champion makes his debut in book one of the Warrior of Mars series.

Dumarest had learned in the hard school of experience and he came equipped with certain attributes. He had very fast reflexes, he carried a knife and knew how to use it, he wore travellers garb which, because of the metal mesh buried within the thermal plastic, gave him protection against the lash of a claw, the rip of thorns, the cut and thrust of edged weapons. Most important of all, he had an overriding determination to survive no matter what the cost.

On Gath this wasn’t easy…




(First published 1997)

Abner Harris was sent to Earth on a mission of extreme urgency. The universe was in danger of enslavement by the Medlins, and the fight against them called for Harris to assume the disguise of a flesh-and-blood Earthman.

But he discovered that the real villains of space were not the Medlins or the people of Earth: they were his own kind.

Suddenly he was alone, alienated from his own race, hated by the Medlins, and an imposter on Earth. No matter what side he chose he’d be a traitor.

Yet choose he must – or remain for ever a man without a planet.




(First published 1963)

In his fourth short-story collection, Watson again demonstrates the extraordinary scope of his imagination. The title story has ancient witchcraft meeting complacent modern suburbia in a tale of spine-chilling horror, while ‘When the Timegate Failed’ casts an unexpected light in the dangers of space travel and man’s powers of self-delusion. Alien matters of a different kind crop up in ‘Windows’, in which mysterious artefacts found on Mars prove to be something of a problem for their chic human owners. Evil Water is a highly inventive collection which is a delight to read.

Planet Earth was finished, its surface seared by nuclear heat, its great cities obliterated, its billions of inhabitants dying or dead. Only a few pockets of survivors remained. For all but a few it was only a matter of time. Then into the poisoned atmosphere of Earth there flashed a mysterious craft from somewhere deep in space. It landed, a small number of Earth people were taken aboard, then the craft disappeared into the great void. During the dark millennium which followed a strange experiment was conducted. When it was complete, another space craft took off for Earth…

When Pickford’s body was found hanging from a beam in his garage, Inspector Loxton was sure that it was a case of suicide following a series of financial and domestic worries.

Then came the criminologist with his slogan, ‘Common sense is all you need’, and in ten minutes he upset the inspector’s hypothesis. Further evidence pointed so clearly in one direction that the arrest and the conviction of the criminal seemed almost a matter of form.

But both the Inspector and the expert are way off course, and it is left to the Chief Constable to clear up the mystery …

‘Mr Connington has the art of writing delightful detective novels’ Baltimore Evening Sun

‘My favourite American crime-writer’ New York Herald Tribune

In the sixteenth century lived two queens about whom much has been written: Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart. However, there are more than just two countries in the British Isles and there is a third monarch, of whom there are no tales. This is his story.

All major characters in this novel bar two were real people. If chronology has not always been followed too strictly, it is because all this is long ago and far away and does not matter now. This is only a story for reading, but it is a true story.

Into a future where a depleted fuel supply had the world spiralling down into grinding poverty and constant war came . . . Moondrift. Mysterious white flakes of alien matter that was the perfect fuel – clean powerful, dependable.

But the aliens – or whatever they were – who sent Moondrift seemed to demand a heavy ransom in return. After each Moondrift comes an eerie sound, as pure as a children’s choir, heard all over the world. It mesmerises all who hear it with it’s beauty – and when it is ended, certain people have simply disappeared without warning, never to be seen again.

This is the story of one who disappeared . . .

Archie Wayne, successful playwright, could not say what impulse had made him return to the small town of his boyhood. On impulse, he called on his boyhood friend, and the matter would have ended there had he not met and fallen for his friend’s daughter, the young and innocent Christine.

Their brief idyll is interrupted by a police enquiry: Archie’s wife Irma is missing, leaving behind a disquieting message, and he finds himself suspect number one in a possible murder case. But Archie is convinced that Irma is alive and trying to ruin him – and tragedy and violence will take their toll on both the guilty and innocent in the search for the truth.

Trillions were hard, bright, tiny things which suddenly arrived – millions and millions and millions of them – one windy day in a village called Harbourtown.

No one could explain them, much less why they had suddenly arrived. Were they a blessing, as their beauty suggested, or a deadly, inexplicable threat? A boy with a microscope was just as likely to come up with the answer as all the acknowledged experts in any known kind of science, so somehow it seemed natural for two ‘ordinary’ boys, Scott and Bem, to join forces with an ex-spaceman against the frightening efforts of the ruthless General Harman to destroy the Trillions, no matter what the cost.

CODE NAME POSTER

The first practical matter transmitter was a success, or so everyone thought. In spite of paranoid security restrictions, Justin Williams and Cinnamon Wright, co-inventors of the device, counted on it to revolutionise civilisation and gain them an honoured place in history.

But the first long-distance field test with a human being – a diplomatic courier carrying a vital message – somehow misfired when the courier killed himself on arrival at his destination.

To prove his faith in his invention – and to escape charges of sabotage – Justin had himself “posted” thousands of miles. He came through unchanged. It was the world that was somehow different…

BY JOHN E. MULLER
The botanist claims that human life depends indirectly on the chlorophyll in the green leaf. The leaf depends on sunlight. But both depend upon the atom. No atoms, no physical matter, no physical universe!
Microscope experts peer closely into the mysteries of the human body, into the mysteries of the green lead, into the mysteries of the chemical elements. It is hardly feasible to subject an atom to microscopic examination. But what if it was possible? What if a new technique of observation was discovered? A strange, revolutionary “seeing” without recourse to the photon.
The microscope might reveal scientific impossibilities which would shake the universe to its foundations. Smallness hold more terrors than greatness.

Her employers are the high priests of Las Vegas and she is their handmaiden. Her job is to lead the lambs to the sacrifice, to keep them happy at the tables, where her partners slaughter the suckers. She longs to be free of the entertainers rubbing elbows with thugs at the craps tables, the divorcées hocking their jewels next to all-night marriage chapels, and the little white balls bouncing along the roulette wheels twenty-four hours a day.

But no matter how hard she tries to escape her past, she’s fated to be caught for ever backstage in the sick glitter of the infamous strip with nothing but sand and neon and money, money, everywhere.

Reporter Sonia Thompson discovers threads linking prominent members of Riverpool society with the chamber of horrors in a neglected waxworks museum. Married Lilith Nile is using it as a place to meet Sir Julian. Schoolteacher Miss Monroe is obsessed with the moth-eaten figure of Mary of England. And why does Mr Cuttle, the amorous Alderman, take such a keen interest in the museum?

When Sir Julian, having spent the night in the waxworks for a bet, is found dead, and an epidemic of purse-snatching sweeps Riverpool, Sonia realises that she is on the verge of uncovering a sinister plot.

Forced to bring matters to a head, Sonia resolves to spend a night alone in the waxworks …

Caroline Watts has accepted a post as games mistress at the prestigious Abbey School in the west of England. She is delighted with the appointment: it’s an excellent private girls’ school. No matter that she was introduced to the post through a tenuous network of family contacts. And that the previous games mistress was found dead in bed from heart failure.

From the moment she arrives at the school, Caroline is beset by fear. But of what? How could a school, owned by two influential ladies and run by the formidable Mrs Nash, threaten harm to a new teacher, eager to start her first job?

Rumour has it that her predecessor died of fright …

‘No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford’ Elmore Leonard

In an expensive Miami neighbourhood, Sergeant Hoke Mosely, Homicide Division, is called to investigate the lethal overdose of a young junkie. But what seems like a routine OD gives Moseley cause to doubt – particularly when he meets the dead kid’s stunning stepmother.

And with his two teenage daughters dumped on him by his troublesome ex-wife, a new beat partner struggling with an unplanned pregnancy, and fifty cold cases to solve, it starts to feel like this little matter of a dead junkie and his beautiful stepmother might just be the answer to Hoke’s prayers . . .

From: The Shaldron Race

To: The Human Race

Greetings:

Your presence on this planet has been noted and the reason for your visit analyzed by our instruments. We have, therefore, taken the liberty of selecting one of your party for our first contact, one whom we feel is best suited to grasp the motivations of both our races and arrange for future group contacts.

Peter Collard stared at the message with a cold feeling of foreboding. He felt pity for the poor devil.

“Who is this selected contact?”

“Ah, now,” Dyson became suddenly interested in the papers on the table. “Well, I’m sorry and all that but, as a matter of fact, they want you.”